George J. Schultze of Schultze Asset Management Identifies the Best Picks for Vulture Investors

December 4, 2017

George J. Schultze is the Founder of Schultze Asset Management, LP, chairs the company’s investment and strategy committees, and together with his team makes the final decision on all investments for the portfolio. He is widely recognized as an expert on distressed and special situations investing, and is often quoted in the media regarding high-profile reorganization cases. Mr. Schultze is also author of The Art of Vulture Investing: Adventures in Distressed Securities Management and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and graduate schools such as Harvard Business School. Prior to founding Schultze Asset Management, LP, he honed his activist distressed-investing approach with M.D. Sass. Before that, he was employed with Fiduciary Partners fund of funds, the Mayer Brown & Platt law firm and Merrill Lynch. Mr. Schultze is a joint MBA/J.D. graduate of Columbia Business School and Columbia Law School. In his exclusive interview with the Wall Street Transcript, Mr. Schultze details his vulture investing protocol.

“The focus of Schultze Asset Management is to concentrate on distressed and event-driven situations, both long and short. Over the years, Schultze Asset Management has grown a fair amount, and I think we’ve done a great job for our clients around the world, focusing on that singular mandate all along. The one thing that has changed is the opportunity set that the market presents us with. From the start, the way we designed our investing strategy is to be able to benefit from a variety of cycles, and that’s why we invest before, during or after distress.”

“For instance, picture a fixed income mutual fund, a fixed income ETF, an insurance company, a CLO that owns original-issue bond or loan debt that was extended to a company in the U.S. When things change, if that loan or bond stops paying regular interest and principal, those original-issue investors often become forced sellers. They don’t have a long-term appetite to remain in that security and see it through a workout.”